Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Language Teaching
Volume 04, Issue 2, (2014) 81-91
www.awer-center.org/gjflt/
Suggested Citation:
Duong, T., M. (2014). An investigation into effects of role-play in an EFL speaking course. Global Journal of
Foreign Language Teaching. 4(2), 81-91.
Abstract
English is spoken all over the world, especially it has been an international language in recent years. The
need to master English language, thus, has been increasing rapidly. Of four language skills, speaking skill is
paid much attention to in language teaching and learning as it is seen as the process of building and
sharing meaning in a variety of contexts. In other words, it is used for communication. That is why this
paper attempted to investigate the effects of role-play, another of communicative techniques with the
hope that it could help learners improve their speaking skill. This paper was quantitative research with the
employment of the closed-ended questionnaire and the tests. The participants included thirty-three first-
year English majors and ten Vietnamese teachers of English at Nong Lam University in Ho Chi Minh city,
Vietnam. For data analysis, descriptive statistics and paired samples t-test were used to analyze the data
obtained from the questionnaire and the tests respectively. The study discovered that (1) in addition to
poor pronunciation and vocabulary, some psychological factors such as shyness, anxiety, and fear of
making mistakes prevented learners from using the target language and (2) role-play provided students
with many opportunities to practise spoken English effectively in real life situations and promoted
students’ interaction. As a result, students could speak English confidently, naturally, and fluently with
English native speakers or those who used English as a means of communication in any circumstances.
*ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE: Tham My Duong, Nong Lam University, Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam,
E-mail address: duongmythamav@gmail.com
Duong, T., M. (2014). An investigation into effects of role-play in an EFL speaking course. Global Journal of Foreign Language
Teaching. 4(2), 81-91.
1. Introduction
People of all ages in the world learn English with different reasons. Harmer (1998) indicates
that English is learned as a compulsory subject at school and for other specific purposes such as
business, tourism, or banking. In Vietnam, students first learn English because it is a required
subject at school. Then they need English for communication. For example, they need English for
finding a good job, travelling, entertaining (reading books or watching movies) and studying
overseas. However, Vietnamese students often find it difficult to communicate in English. One
of the major reasons affecting students’ oral communication is that the chance of using the
target language is not much. In fact, English speaking environment for EFL students in Vietnam is
mainly classroom as Dang Thi Huong (as cited in Vo, 2005) found out, “even learners majoring in
English at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Ho Chi Minh City used 80% English
and 20% Vietnamese inside the classroom while they likely to use only 20% or 30% English and
80% or 70% Vietnamese outside the classroom” (p. 2). Besides, students have few opportunities
to participate in English speaking clubs, English song contests, or international events such as
the program of exchanging students with foreign universities, study tour, etc.
Nong Lam University (NLU) (formerly the University of Agriculture and Forestry) of Ho Chi
Minh City was founded in 1955. It consists of 12 faculties with 69 departments and 5
independent departments. In 2001, the Faculty of Foreign Languages (FFL) was officially founded
because NLU has aimed at transforming into a comprehensive university with a broad range of
educational programmes. FFL is quite young, but NLU has the Center for Foreign Studies (CFS),
which was established in 1990. It is known as one of the popular English language centres in Ho
Chi Minh City as well as in Vietnam. Therefore, FFL could inherit qualified teaching staff from CFS
because most of the teachers at FFL have been teaching at CFS for a long time. The Faculty
comprises departments of Language Practice, Foreign Literature, Translation and Interpretation,
TESOL Methodology, Linguistics, ESP, Management, and French. The Bachelor of Art training
programme lasts four academic years. There are three speaking courses which are taught in the
first three terms. All teachers in charge of speaking courses at FFL have M.A degrees and at least
nine-year experience of teaching spoken English.
In order to study at FFL, students have to pass the university entrance exams which consist of
three subjects: Mathematics, Literature, and English. Therefore, the expected level of English of
first-year English majors is pre-intermediate. However, the majority of students have difficulties
with English speaking and listening skills. Nowadays, students can get more and more
opportunities to have direct interaction with foreigners, mainly English native speakers;
therefore, they often use English for communication. To meet students’ needs, the faculty has
paid more attention to the communicative approach in order to make students use the target
language naturally and confidently in different social contexts. Communicative activities such as
role-plays, problem-solving tasks, or games are used in the classroom so as to encourage
students’ participation in speaking activities. Nevertheless, role-play has not been commonly
used in an English speaking class at FFL-NLU. In this study, hence, the researcher would like to
investigate the effect of role-play on first-year English majors’ English speaking skill at NLU. The
aims of this study are to investigate the problems of first-year English majors at NLU-HCMC in
learning English speaking skill and to identify effects of role-play in teaching and learning English
speaking skill.
2. Literature review
2.1. The nature of speaking
Burns and Joyce (1997) define that speaking is an interactive process of constructing meaning
that involves producing, receiving and processing information. Celce-Murcia and Olshtain (2000)
claim that speaking can be considered the most difficult skill to acquire because it requires the
command of both listening comprehension and speech production sub-skills in unplanned
situations. On the other hand, it can be viewed as the easiest skill since one can use nonverbal
communication, repetition, and various other strategies to produce comprehensible utterances.
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Duong, T., M. (2014). An investigation into effects of role-play in an EFL speaking course. Global Journal of Foreign Language
Teaching. 4(2), 81-91.
2.2. Role-play
Role-play is “drama-like classroom activities in which students take the roles of different
participants in a situation and act out what might typically happen in that situation” (Richards,
Platt & Platt, 1993). According to Harmer (1998), role-plays stimulate the real world in the same
way, but students are given different roles. Students are told who they are and what they think
about a certain subject. They have to talk and act with their new characters. While Richards et
al. (1993) and Harmer (1998) define role-play as a term, Ladousse (1992) characterizes role-play
as two single words as follows.
When students assume a “role”, they play a part (in either their own or somebody else’s) a
specific situation. “Play” means that the role is taken on in a safe environment in which students
are as inventive and playful as possible. (p. 5)
Meanwhile, Thornbury (2005) thinks that role-play involves the adoption of another “persona”
(p. 98) when students play a role. For example, students pretend to be an employer interviewing
a job applicant or a customer complaining about a company’s products.
Regarding the advantages of role-play, Dangerfield (1991) believes that role-play is one method
of maximising students’ talking time, ensuring that students get an optimum level of practice
during their limited class time. Furthermore, role-play gives students opportunities to improve
communicative competence and creativity. Klippel (1991) claims that “role-plays improve the
students’ oral performance generally” (p.122). Besides helping students enhance their oral skills,
Sasse (2001) believes that role-play might unlock creative doors. Last but not least, role-play is
one of the communicative techniques “which develops fluency in language students, which
promotes interaction in the classroom, and which increases motivation” (Ladousse, 1992).
In brief, there have been various definitions of role-play, yet they share the same idea that role-
play is a communicative technique in which students are supposed to act with new characters.
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Duong, T., M. (2014). An investigation into effects of role-play in an EFL speaking course. Global Journal of Foreign Language
Teaching. 4(2), 81-91.
The affective domain is the emotional side of human behavior, and it may be juxtaposed to
the cognitive side. The development of affective states or feeling involves a variety of
personality factors, feeling both about ourselves and about others with whom we come into
contact (p. 143).
According to Brown (2000), the affective factors which are related to second language or
foreign language learning are motivation and attitude, anxiety, etc. These items are called
“psychological characteristics” in which motivation and attitudes are paid most attention
because various studies have found that they are very strongly related to achievement in
language learning (Gardner & Lambert, 1972). Littlewood (1991a) also says, “the development
of communicative skills can only take place if learners have motivation and opportunity to
express their own identity…” (p. 93). In fact, Brown (2000) determines that it is easy to assume
that success in any task is due simply to the fact that someone is “motivated”. Regarding
anxiety, the construct of anxiety plays an important role in second language acquisition.
According to Littlewood (1991b), it is easy for a foreign language classroom to create anxiety.
There are two types of anxiety affecting the process: debilitative (or harmful) and facilitative (or
helpful). The feeling of nervousness is often a sign of facilitative anxiety, a symptom of just
enough tension to get the job done. Brown (2000) concludes that “both too much and too little
anxiety may hinder the process of successful second language learning” (p. 152).
3. Methodology
3.1 Research questions
(1) What are the problems first-year English majors at FFL-NLU face in English speaking
learning?
(2) What factors contributing to the support and resistance to the use of role-play in a
speaking course?
(3) Does role-play improve the students’ English speaking skill after the use of role-play in
the speaking course? If so, how?
there were 7 males (21.2%) and 26 females (78.8%). The age range in this group was a little
more different than in the experimental group: 2 respondents were 20 years old (6.1%); 4 were
19 years old (12.1%); and 27 were 18 years old (81.8%). They all have been learning English for
over 7 years.
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Duong, T., M. (2014). An investigation into effects of role-play in an EFL speaking course. Global Journal of Foreign Language
Teaching. 4(2), 81-91.
As far as speaking assessment is concerned, the criteria to assess students’ speaking ability
included four categories: fluency, accuracy (grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation),
interactive communication, and task completion.
The diagnostic and achievement tests were conducted in both the experimental group and
the control group at the first and sixteenth weeks. Examiners graded each student while
students were role-playing in pair.
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Duong, T., M. (2014). An investigation into effects of role-play in an EFL speaking course. Global Journal of Foreign Language
Teaching. 4(2), 81-91.
sum up, all teachers to some extent identified the effects of role-play on developing students’
speaking ability.
practising English speaking with role-play; 39.4% agreed that it also helped them speak English
more fluently; and 30.3% of the students thought that it assisted them to use the language at
the right time and at the right place.
In brief, the teacher’s and students’ responses to the questionnaire were somehow different,
but they basically believed that role-play could help enhance the students’ speaking ability.
The results of the diagnostic test indicated that the mean score of group B ( =6.09) was
nearly the same as that of group A ( =6.03). In group B, two participants (6.1%) got good scores,
the number of participants who got fair was 9 (27.3%), many participants (63.6%) got average
scores, and there was one participant whose score was poor (3%). Similarly, most of the
participants in group A got average scores (72.7%), and 24.2% of the participants got fair and
good scores.
The difference between the two groups was shown more obviously in the achievement test.
In group A, about two-thirds of the participants (60.6%) were ranked at average level; few
participants (12.1%) were ranked at good level; and there was one student (3%) who got poor
score. Meanwhile, all of the participants in group B got at least score 5. There were 20 out of 33
participants (60.6%) ranked at fair and good levels. Especially, one student (3%) got excellent
score, and no participants had poor scores. The mean score of group B ( =6.84) which was
higher than group A’s ( =6.33) once again indicated the difference between the two groups.
The frequency distribution of the diagnostic and achievement scores was presented in the
following histogram. The histogram stated that group B’s achievement scores were better than
group A’s. The red line standing for group B’s achievement scores moved to the right of the
histogram in which high scores were displayed while the other lines were on the left.
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Duong, T., M. (2014). An investigation into effects of role-play in an EFL speaking course. Global Journal of Foreign Language
Teaching. 4(2), 81-91.
According to Figure 1 and Table 5, there was no significant difference between diagnostic and
achievement tests of group A (P=0.135>.05). It means that the diagnostic scores of group A were
not considerably different from the achievement ones. The majority of participants in both the
tests were at average level (scores 5 & 6). In contrast, the participants of group B made much
more progress in their speaking skill in the achievement test than those in the diagnostic test
(P=0.002<.05). In fact, one student whose score was poor (score 4) in the diagnostic test got
score 5 in the achievement test, and they mostly got score 7 (36.4%) and score 8 (24.2%). In
addition, the improvement was easily realised when a student achieved score 9.
To sum up, there was a very small gap between the two groups at the beginning of the
speaking course. However, the sharp difference between them was really explored when there
were achievement scores. This result was one of the important evidences to state that role-play
could help improve participants’ speaking skill to some extent.
5.2 Recommendations
5.2.1. To students
Students should try to speak English as much as possible since practice can be undoubtedly
very useful (Lewis & Hill, 1985). They should attend English speaking clubs or international
events if possible.
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Duong, T., M. (2014). An investigation into effects of role-play in an EFL speaking course. Global Journal of Foreign Language
Teaching. 4(2), 81-91.
Students should not be afraid of making mistakes. Practically, only a few students regard
mistakes as a natural part of leaning while the majority of them feel ashamed of making
mistakes. If they do not worry much about mistakes, they will feel more comfortable and
confident to speak English.
5.2.2. To teachers
Language teachers need to determine that developing strategies for maximising the amount
of students’ talking time is necessary.
Teachers should let dominant students and shy students work together so that they have
opportunities to share and learn from each other.
Furthermore, in an English speaking class, teachers tend to encourage students not to use
mother tongue. Therefore, teachers should not introduce too difficult situations, otherwise
students have to use mother tongue to interact.
5.2.3. To administrators
Besides the above suggestions, it is useful for the administrators of FFL to consider the
following. Equipping classrooms with better conditions is needed. Classrooms should be
enlarged and equipped with modern facilities such as overhead projectors, good cassettes and
tapes, VCRs, and microphones. Besides, comfortable movable desks are necessary for a speaking
class.
English speaking environment should be created. If possible foreign teachers who are from
English-speaking countries should be invited to teach communication skills. Besides maintaining
English speaking clubs, English song or play contests and English quizzes should be held
frequently so that students can learn English in a non-threatening environment.
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